BOSTON (AP) -Paul Pierce leaned into the camera with a mock scowl and a message for the friends he grew up with: “I know you all go to the games. But if I see any of you with a Lakers jersey on, I’ll know who my real friends are.”
The Boston swingman is bringing the Celtics back to his hometown to play the Lakers, and they’re taking along a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven NBA finals. For the L.A. native who used to sneak into the Forum to watch the Lakers as a kid, it’s a chance to show the people who knew him back when that he’s all grown up now.
“This means everything. It’s a dream,” Pierce said Sunday night after scoring 28 points to lead Boston to a 108-102 victory over the Lakers in Game 2. “It’s a dream for me to go home and play in a place where I grew up, against a team I grew up with, with the Boston Celtics, with the opportunity to win an NBA championship. Couldn’t have scripted it any better.”
Despite a knee injury that might or might not have required the help of three people to carry him from the floor in Game 1, Pierce returned to hit back-to-back 3 pointers in the series opener to give the Celtics the lead for good and propel them to victory.
In Game 2 on Sunday night, he led Boston in scoring and hit a pair of crucial free throws with 23 seconds left after the Lakers cut a 24-point deficit to 104-102. Then, with L.A. down four, Pierce blocked Sasha Vujacic’s 3-point attempt to protect the lead.
Thanks to the 2-3-2 format in the finals – the earlier rounds feature two home games for each team before alternating home courts for Games 5-7 – the Lakers can take the lead in the series on their home court. The Celtics steamrolled through the regular season but they’re just 2-7 on the road in the playoffs this year.
But L.A. isn’t exactly away for Pierce.
In visits back home with the Celtics, Pierce averages almost 28 points and seven rebounds per game against the Lakers, including a 33-point game at the Staples Center in Boston’s 110-91 victory in its only visit there this season. (He also averages 25.5 points and eight rebounds against the Clippers in L.A.)
“Paul has home cooking in L.A.,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “That’s not all bad.”
As a kid growing up in Inglewood, Pierce would sneak into the Forum where the Lakers used to play to see his heroes, such as Magic Johnson, go head-to-head with the Celtics in some of the NBA’s classic confrontations. After starring in high school and at Kansas, he slid to a disappointing 10th in the draft before he was picked by, of all teams, the Celtics.
“I thought, ‘Damn, not the Celtics!”’ he said. “Then I thought, ‘Damn, not Rick Pitino.”’
Pierce survived Pitino’s notoriously difficult practices and developed into a star with the Celtics, but he and Antoine Walker developed a reputation as hardheaded and difficult to coach. Pierce didn’t help matters when he clashed with U.S. team coach George Karl at the 2002 world championships.
The Celtics had enough of Walker by the end of the 2002-03 season, when new general manager Danny Ainge decided to clean house. He traded Walker and considered doing the same with Pierce, but decided to keep him at the center of the roster instead of rebuilding around the Celtics’ new, young players.
“Luckily, we all said we still have time with Paul,” owner Wyc Grousbeck said. “I want Paul here his entire career, and I want to retire his jersey when he’s done. It comes from me growing up in Boston and seeing Carl Yastrzemski.”
It also comes from seeing Pierce.
Grousbeck was sitting courtside in 2002 when the Suns’ Amare Stoudamire hammered Pierce as he drove to the basket and broke two of his teeth. The pieces of the teeth slid across the floor and came to rest at the owner’s feet.
“I can’t get that out of my head. We’re looking at these two bloody teeth,” Grousbeck said. “I said, ‘There’s a competitor there. There’s a Celtic.’ That’s all I needed to see. Then I watched him another 150 games and I saw the same thing.
“There were never any doubts. We just needed to get him some help.”
Pierce finally got his help this year.
After reaching the conference finals in 2002 and advancing out of the first round the following season, Pierce went four years without winning a playoff series as Ainge tore the team apart in a run at the draft lottery. Meanwhile, Pierce languished as the only star on a young team that was going nowhere.
He clashed with Rivers, who wanted him to move the ball around the offense instead of holding it while the shot clock ran down and trying to outplay his defender one-on-one. Rivers understood that it was difficult for Pierce to trust his young, inconsistent teammates, but he kept pushing and Pierce pushed back.
“Me and Doc definitely bumped heads from the beginning. That’s what makes it so special,” Pierce said. “Right now, I love the guy. But I didn’t think it was going to work between me and him.”
Although Pierce has shown signs of maturity this year – laughing off bad calls that would have set him off in previous seasons – it doesn’t hurt that he has teammates he can rely upon. Things didn’t work out with the pingpong balls, but the offseason moves that brought in Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen have the Celtics in position to win their 17th NBA title – and first since 1986.
“It was so easy to stay where he was, because he was getting good numbers,” said Rivers, who compared Pierce’s overhaul to Tiger Woods revamping his swing even though he was already the best player in golf. “But he wasn’t really efficient. So many stars wouldn’t do that. I was asking him to change a whole bunch of what he does – on a bad team.”
Pierce eventually came around, and that’s one reason why he’s headed back to Los Angeles with a chance at his first NBA title.
It’s where he spent his childhood.
But he grew up in Boston.
“He was the guy that gave in, and realized he was the better for it,” Rivers said. “He’s matured.”
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